Total pages in book: 136
Estimated words: 128413 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 642(@200wpm)___ 514(@250wpm)___ 428(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 128413 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 642(@200wpm)___ 514(@250wpm)___ 428(@300wpm)
One last act of love from a mother to her child.
Chapter 43
Henry is showing signs of mental degradation. A lingering effect from the implants we decided to utilize precipitously? It seems the most logical answer, given his previous stability. It is pure luck that I have not been similarly afflicted.
—Private journal of Shoshanna Scott (personal archive, address unknown)
AUDEN COULD STILL see and feel her direct link to the PsyNet. The Arrow shield didn’t affect that. Nothing could affect that. It was so deep inside a Psy mind that it was a thing primal.
Cutting that link with no attempt to lock into another network would be a death sentence. Psy brains couldn’t survive without the biofeedback provided by a psychic network. It was a necessity akin to air.
A piercing beeping on the physical plane that seeped into her consciousness.
Bye, my baby, she whispered to Liberty, I love you. Because her baby would survive. The Arrow watching over her would notice the shock wave, move to protect the child. She trusted in that unknown Arrow because she trusted in Remi.
I love you, Remi, she said, even though he couldn’t hear her.
Such a huge emotion she had inside her when it came to the alpha who’d prowled into her life and shown her happiness, pleasure, laughter. It was so different from her love for Liberty, had so many more jagged edges and harsh demands, and it was as beautiful.
I wish I could say bye to you. I wish I could tell you all you are to me. I wish we could’ve had forever.
But her time was over; she’d held the line until she knew she was hemorrhaging internally—but death of the body wouldn’t end Shoshanna unless Auden ensured a psychic death at the same time.
The only way to take Shoshanna down was for Auden to go down.
Auden sent out one last pulse of rage in an attempt to distract Shoshanna while she cut the link…but that rage burned with a feral anger so hot that it singed her insides. It had claws and teeth, was a thing of muscle and strength of enormous size. As if it was the rage of tens…a hundred…more…people fired up in battle against the monster that was Shoshanna.
Auden roared with them, as feral and as ferocious, her psychic claws digging into the bed and her eyes shifting form.
That was when she knew.
Remi had come into battle with her. He’d brought with him the wild fury of every single member of his pack. She didn’t know how, but she knew it was a one-way street. Shoshanna couldn’t get to him—because even Auden had no idea how he was there.
So she surrendered to the primal storm without fear for RainFire, and that storm was far more violent a foe than Shoshanna had ever faced. Her mother withdrew in an effort to regroup, retracting her hooks from inside Auden as she did so.
But the hunters on her tail continued to chase after her, the pack’s rage coalescing into a black mass that suffocated Shoshanna until she whimpered and screamed in a tiny corner of Auden’s mind.
Good-bye, Mother, Auden said.
Because Remi’s storm? It was waiting for her to make the choice, a crouched leopard that quivered with bloodlust.
Only one choice would protect not just Liberty, but all the Libertys to come.
Auden ended her mother with a fine blade of rage that slammed into Shoshanna’s psychic core, causing it to implode. The rage that was Auden and Remi and RainFire didn’t permit the pieces of Shoshanna to escape. Instead, they watched like the cats they were, until she disintegrated into nothing, no trace remaining of the woman who’d once been Councilor Shoshanna Scott.
Auden’s mother was dead. This time, forever.
* * *
• • •
REMI snarled when the doctor tried to put some kind of net on Auden’s skull. “Get that the fuck away unless you want your arm ripped off!”
The doctor halted, hovered. “I’ve done what I can for the body, but she needs this to stabilize the transfer. She was very clear about that!”
Remi saw Charisma Wai reach toward her lower back at the same instant. The aide was on the other side of the bed and quite a distance away—but Remi was an alpha leopard. He vaulted over the bed and slammed Charisma to the wall before she ever touched the weapon, much less attempted to fire it.
Her head hit the wall so hard that it left behind a streak of blood as she slumped to the floor. The weapon clunked uselessly to the hospital-grade plascrete.
He turned to the doctor, claws out. “The instructions have changed.”
“Yes, of course.” The doctor babbled, right as alarms began to shriek throughout the facility. “I didn’t realize. I’ll do whatever the Councilor wishes, of course.”
Remi had never wanted this man anywhere near Auden, had only permitted him to work on her because she would’ve otherwise died. “You are no longer her physician. Don’t touch her unless you want to end up like Ms. Wai.”